[phire]

Sex offender registries are just registries. They only work if someone decides to actually do a query. It might prevent them from getting a childcare job, but it doesn't really prevent them from accessing children at all.

The registers are also massively bloated, some people get put on them for nothing more than public urination.

The only sex offenders who actually get regular checks that might identify this type of thing, are those on parole, or similar court ordered programs.

[dhosek]

Other things that could get you on the registry include visiting a nude beach in California or being an 18-year-old high school student with a 17-year-old girlfriend and having your sexual activity discovered by a vindictive parent (that last one will get you the bonus bar of shame of criminal activity involving a minor). The registries are rather blunt tools and also end up doing things like making getting housing difficult (there was a news story I saw in the 90s about an encampment under a freeway in Florida as it was the only place people on the sex offender registry could legally live in a major city (I think Miami but this was 30 years ago). A more recent story in Chicago pointed out that a restriction on sleeping on the CTA would cause homeless people on the registry to end up being unable to meet the terms of their parole). I don’t really have much sympathy for child sex abusers, but if people are such dangers to society that they can only live under a freeway or will be reincarcerated on unavoidable technicalities, something is very wrong.

[jahnu]

Louis Theroux did a very interesting but quiet sad documentary on this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040qrxw

[alsetmusic]

> an encampment under a freeway in Florida as it was the only place people on the sex offender registry could legally live

I listened to a podcast that talked about this encampment years ago. The people living there are quite literally trapped. They aren't allowed to move to another city because of their parole and the city they are in has no other location that isn't within some distance of schools, playgrounds, etc that they're forbidden from being near.

One person interviewed had some petty offense like peeing in public when drunk and talked about the violence and crime that occurred in the camp. Listening to him made me so angry at the injustice that people caught in edge cases are subjected to. He drinks too much, pees on the side of a building, and is now forced to live among rapists and predators.

The OP mentioned high school students in totally normal relationships being criminalized. Another example given in the podcast ep was teens sending nude selfies to their bf/gf that got charged and convicted for distributing csam. This is not how enforcement of these laws should work. I'm glad I grew up before smart phones cause I was really stupid when I was a teen.

Meanwhile, if you're a rich old white guy…

[e40]

How can visiting a nude beach get be a trigger?

[MisterTea]

Right but I'll be honest, I've never thought about looking up the people I've dated in the past. No one really talked about it when I was younger. I don't remember my mother telling me to do criminal background checks on people I'm seeing.

Happened to me. Went out with somebody who turned out to be a serial shop lifter who operated with a small gang of other shop lifters. Everything looked fine up front until they disappeared when we had plans without contact for days. Thought I was ghosted. Turns out they were arrested.

A friend went out with someone who destroyed his car after he broke up because she was violent twords him. He had to get a restraining order. A friend of his dug up a link to a FL police site. Turns out she did a little time down there for assaulting another woman, beating her with a coat rack during a fight. He never thought to look her up either and she seemed nice at first. Shit happens. Don't blame the victim for not being paranoid that everyone they're dating might be a criminal. Especially when there are damn good liars out there.

[zdragnar]

Back when my wife and I were renting, we only found out our landlord was on the list because his parole officer stopped by and asked if he'd informed us as he was legally required to do.

We moved out rather quickly after that. If we were in a situation where we had to rent again, and went with an individual renting their own house rather than a company, checking out the registry is on the checklist of things to do.

[Aurornis]

The salient point was that the person was in a relationship to the child’s mother.

[phire]

They didn't know who the child was, yet alone the mother. All they had were photos of an unnamed girl being abused.

[Loudergood]

Indeed, he may not have even been on the lease or title of the residence.

[Ancapistani]

I hav heard this many times, but never found a single example - and I’ve looked. Everyone I’ve researched on the registry richly deserved it.

I challenge you and anyone else reading this to find an example of someone who is on the sex offender registry due to public urination.

[godelski]

I had a friend threatened with this by a cop. I was there. We had been drinking and he wanted to change his oil at a Jiffy Lube. Unbeknownst to us there was a park on the other side. He just got a ticket but the cop made the threat. It doesn't disprove your claim but it is an example of why the belief might persist

[MarsIronPI]

> I challenge you and anyone else reading this to find an example of someone who is on the sex offender registry due to public urination.

When I was in high school, our school police officer once gave our class a talk about how to stay off that list. He strongly warned us against sending nudes, because he claimed 18-year-olds getting nudes from their 17-year-old girlfriends was a common way for 18-year-olds to get on the registry.

So, no it's not a concrete example and it's not as non-sexual as public urination but it's still a thing cops are telling young adults to take seriously.

[giraffe_lady]

Right, the registry is public in most places, you can just check. When I open it for some of the places I've lived & surrounding areas it is overwhelmingly very serious crimes, the majority of them against minors, a large percentage minors under 13 which is a different category of offense here.

You sometimes need to get familiar with the local legal jargon to interpret it correctly, for example where I live there is no crime "rape" it is recorded as "sexual battery," things like that. And don't assume something is not serious because it is "second degree" or whatever, look up the statutes or sentencing guidelines. I have to seek pretty hard to find anything that could even plausibly be something like an overcharged public urination.

The first one I found, I looked up the case, and the offense took place at 3:40 pm at a city bus stop two blocks from a high school. Pretty decent odds that guy tells all his friends he got booked for trying to take a piss. He might even say that on reddit and HN.

[ipaddr]

https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/201...

[wildzzz]

It's a stupid meme. Public urination, like actually taking a piss in public while no one is around you, is likely going to be a ticket for disorderly conduct if a specific charge for it doesn't exist. You won't get an indecent exposure charge unless you're purposely exposing yourself to others, it requires intent. Sometimes flashers will use the excuse of urinating for their intentional exposure or will lie that their indecent exposure charge was due to public urination and not because they were really masturbating in plain view. There probably have been prosecutors that have tried to slap an indecent exposure charge on an innocent public urinater but like everyone else says, they can't find any proof of it actually sticking.

[aussieguy1234]

> some people get put on them for nothing more than public urination

When minor offences can get people put on the register, this dilutes the meaning of being on the register.

Every actual sex offender will claim they're on there not because of the serious crimes they committed, but because they went nude on the wrong beach, or something similarly minor.

[furyofantares]

Have you ever looked at one of the registries?

The ones I've seen have had details about the offense(s).

[jiqiren]

How many of these sex offenders bought this couch and live close to this brick factory in homes built in that time period?

[phire]

About 0.3% of the adult population is on registries in the US.

With 40,000 couch sales, there would be roughly 120 sex offenders would have bought that couch. You can see what I mean about the registries being bloated.

Doesn't really narrow things down until you add the brick factory, but then they already had it down to 40 houses.

But it's a mistake to even assume the couch was bought by the same house as the offender. The offender could just be visiting, or the couch could have been moved to a different house since purchase (sold second hand, or the owner moved). And you are assuming the offender had been caught before, or was even on the sex offender registry for abusing children.

[expedition32]

There was an infamous case in the Netherlands were two children were horrifically attacked in a park and it turned out that TWO pedos were at that location at the time. They got the wrong one.

Serendipity and all that.

[roysting]

I think what is confusing is likely that the investigators/detectives were probably trying to make sure that the girl was actually in the house where the sex offender was registered or technically living, and not maybe kept somewhere else. A lot of detective work is building the case, but also confirming what you believe is actually true and you need the evidence to also request the warrant on factual grounds. They could have busted in the door of that house and found that there was no such brick to be found anywhere and the girl was sold off to someone else or something like that.

It’s really rather sick and deranged though that this kind of dynamic of women with children associating with sex offenders is not exactly rare. Frankly, I hope the mother was also charged.

[ndiddy]

The whole thing about people getting put on the sex offender registry for public urination is a myth and there's no verifiable cases of it happening. There are two cases that are relatively close. The first is James Birch, who pled guilty to indecent exposure for peeing on a Taco Bell because he was representing himself and didn't understand that meant he'd have to register as a sex offender. He realized his mistake and the court let him undo the plea and the charges were dropped. The second is Juan Matamoros, a meth dealer from Florida who claimed in the mid-2000s that the reason why he got put on the Massachusetts sex offender registry in the 80s was public urination. Due to the age of the case and Massachusetts privacy laws the court records aren't publicly available and his lawyer from the 80s responded to a request for interview about the case with "no judge I am aware of would allow someone to be put on the sex offender registry for peeing in public".

If anyone tells you that's why they're on the sex offender registry, it's extremely likely they're lying about it and you should really look them up.

[holmesworcester]

It was standard practice by the police and DA in 2000s Massachusetts.

Neighbors were annoyed at loud college parties at the school I went to, so local police waited in bushes to catch people peeing in them, arrested them, and one of the charges was indecent exposure.

Happened to one person I knew personally so it must have happened to several others at just this school.

My friend plead out to some lower charge or probably got a continuance, but it massively increased the leverage they had over him and the fees and fines they could collect, and it massively lowered the chance of him doing any pushback that could have lead to a jury trial, which at least as far as he understood at the time would have put him on the registry, and which is why they abused the law and charged people this way.

[kgwxd]

There was also that Chicago Sunroof incident.